Today Crypto just became a little more mainstream!

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago

In news out today, the Robinhood trading app announced that they will be rolling out trading in cryptocurrencies.

Before we get too excited, Steem was not named as one of the currencies that they will be offering.

At least not yet. :)

According to the news, Robinhood announced that they would be offering trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum to start with.

What is Robinhood?

Well besides being one of my favorite stories as a kid about someone stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, Robinhood is also a trading application.

It was designed to bring stock trading to millennials by offering fee-less trading that takes place mostly from a mobile device.

Not surprisingly, the fee-less feature has attracted a decent sized audience as they currently have over 3 million customers and about 80% of those would be considered millennials.

That is important because many of the cryptocurrency investors would also be classified as millennials.

Seems like the perfect fit!

Some specifics:

Robinhood says they plan on having no investment minimums or maximums for clients using their app.

There will also be no withdrawal limits which is something fairly unique to cryptocurrency trading and could be attractive to many traders/investors.

The plan is also to offer fee-less trading to their cryptocurrency traders as well. Something that would also be very attractive to traders as exchange fees can be somewhat high currently.

The company had this to say on the topic:

"We will connect to many exchanges, up to a dozen or more, over the next several months. We want to break even on this business, not to profit from it. We view this as an opportunity to expand our customer base and give our customers more access to functionality."

Awesome!

Robinhood also stated that they will hold most of the digital coins offline in what is called cold storage, which prevents hackers from stealing the coins.

The catch to all of this?

Robinhood will only be launching in 5 states to start with.

Customers in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire will all be able to trade bitcoin and ethereum through the app beginning in February.

The rest of us?

Not so much.

However, the plan is to eventually expand to other states as regulations are met and proper licenses acquired.

Until then, I guess we have to watch with envy as our neighbors take advantage of potentially a great new feature.

Either way, I think the cryptocurrency market just opened up to potentially a whole wave of new buyers.

Now we just have to get Steem on there... ;)

Stay informed my friends.

Source:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/25/stock-trading-app-robinhood-to-roll-out-bitcoin-ethereum-trading.html

Image Sources:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/26/robincorn/

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Robin_Hood_(character)

Follow me: @jrcornel

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Glad I live in Cali. I will get the App and report back on its functionality. May have to say goodbye to Coinbase 🤪

Yes! Let us know how it works! I am interested to hear about some first hand experiences. :)

Would be awesome to get STEEM on ther :)

Good. Coinbase is a bane at times

I would say hell with coinbase hahah

Coinbase doesn't have the most economical fee structures, but I haven't heard too many issues with their security or confirmation of trades. Really simple user interface too. Probably the easiest for novice crypto investors. What is your beef with Coinbase?

Coinbase knowingly clogged up the mempool for last several months inflating BTC fees. Coinbase fakked everyone over with BCH listing for several days. Coinbase is difficult to use for noobs taking sometimes several days just for verification. Coinbase sucks. An alternative is much needed. Should I say more because there is a lot more?

What a pity, that I live in Norway :(

It is not a pity. Because if you didn't live in Norway we would not have met! I will kill you for talking like this! grr <3

oooo you are so romantic <3 but don't​ kill me, you would be sad without me :D

I personally like your love story here.... cause this Robinhood news doesn't matter to me :)

Thank you for a good article. Have a good day :)

It’s funny cause I deleted the app off my phone today. Then later I read the news about this and redownloaded it. Thanks for sharing & Steem On :)

That is hilarious. Hopefully you like the crypto features much better! :)

This is great!

Great write up, here's HOW TO - Get free stock from Robinhood AND get on the waitlist for Robinhood Crypto https://steemit.com/crypto/@johnthompson/how-to-get-a-free-stock-then-get-access-to-robinhood-crypto-coinbasekiller

I'm in, thanks for the tip!

Cool thanks!!

I doubt if those of us in Nigeria can use it.

Don't think so, sorry. I should add that to my write up for clarification

That will be nice @johnthompson. Good job

Hmmmm. Fee-less!

That is very attractive.

I am so sure many more exchanges will roll out this year with more juicy options.

It wouldn't be about the perks, it will be about security, efficiency and integrity

Now we just have to get Steem on there...

It's so funny how this platform don't consider steem in their first listing. It seems understandable but it is to their disadvantage.

Steem is hot

It did $450 million dollar volume yesterday. That is bigly.

Hmm... That is indeed big

Rough world out there eh?! :)

This is just the beginning - Blockchain will change everything in the coming months! Future is going to explode like anything with AI, VR, IOT and much more!

Yeah. That's it. It is not just about blockchain. It is about decentralization and possibly the popularity of other technologies similar to the blockchain.

Got a bit excited until I reached the catch, what about international customers, any app or exchange to suit their needs? Any ideas are welcomed.

Hey. That’s an awesome step for them. I used them shortly before i learned about crypto. Then i jumped into crypto and everything took off from there. Hopefully add more states quickly. This would be great for their business and for customers.

But on a random note, have you heard of the debate to lower the price of SBD to $1 and peg it with the dollar? Well i think this is an under reported issue by fellow steemians. I wrote a post about it here:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@ginquitti/high-sbd-or-usd1-sbd-putting-greed-aside-high-sbd-is-still-best

Now I’m not asking for an upvote or resteem. Simply that you talk about this issue and make a post for all your followers to see. I have a limited support group and very few active followers. So my post didn’t reach as many as yours can. You may even take the opposing side of mine, but i feel like more people need to hear about this issue. Not many people know about it. So please spread the word and all that. Thanks for listening to my whole speech lol

Yea I have seen a little of this debate. Where are people leaning at the moment? I haven't been following closely. Personally, I would absolutely be against purposely bringing SBD prices down. This has been a huge boon to the growth of the platform. We are no where near sustainable to be purposely bringing down prices when that is the sole purpose people are here.

It seems like some of the witnesses are in favor of the change to $1 but a lot of people seem to be against it. You’re definitely right. The platform isn’t at the right stage to do this and I think it would cause a mass exit from steemit. Not to mention steem would slow its growth or even drop, which i touched on in my post.

I believe the community should decide,not a hand full of witnesses since it would be a change that would affect the platform so much